Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“You have an intuition with color, Norah,” he answers, and his voice is matter-of-fact. “A tangible ability to connect reality with the abstract. The wall you painted? It was from memory of a sunset last week, right?”
His words are a shock to my system. They are a one-thousand-piece puzzle, and I feel like I’m missing half of the pieces.
“I… How do you know that?”
His answering smile isn’t happy—it’s edgy. I wish I understood it. I wish I understood Bennett Bishop at all.
God, maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I mean, I really want the job—need the job—but working for him sounds like one of the worst notions I’ve ever had.
“Look, I don’t know if this is going to work,” I say, my voice devoid of any and all confidence I had on my way over here. “You and me together, every da—”
“Dad!” a young but strong voice calls, completely interrupting not only my sentence, but my very ability to breathe. “Daddy!”
Daddy?
Bennett whips around quickly, just as the small girl appears at the mouth of the hallway. She’s walking slowly in a long, pink nightgown, seemingly holding on to the wall for support. She’s a beautiful little thing, but she’s also small and frail, and it seems like each of her movements takes a Herculean effort. Like the simple task of walking isn’t a simple task at all.
“Summer!” Bennett shouts, panic lining every single note of his words. “What are you doing out of your chair? Where’s Charlie?”
“Who’s that?” the little girl asks, staring at me with familiar blue eyes, wild, curly blond hair, and a megawatt smile. She ignores Bennett completely. “Who are you?”
“Summer—”
“Tell me who she is, and I’ll let you get my chair.”
“Summer.”
Her name on his lips makes my eyes dart down to his left hand, noting the visible S-u-m on top of his ring finger. Holy hell. My jaw wants to go unhinged at the revelation, while something I don’t know how to explain comes over me. All I know is that I step up and inside the door without invitation. “Hi, I’m Norah,” I call out. “Norah Ellis.”
It’s so not my place and breaches a million and one boundaries, but the fragility of the little girl’s body and Bennett’s panic about her chair—whatever that means—is enough to make me trample over it all. “And I guess you’re Summer, right? What a pretty name.”
She smiles again, bigger this time, and the small features of what I know would be the same on Bennett if he ever bothered to smile hit me square in the gut.
Bennett Bishop is someone’s daddy.
Bennett’s voice is careful but forceful as he calls out, “Charlie!” into the back of the house. Ten seconds later, a petite woman with shoulder-length blond hair and rugged facial features, wearing deep-purple medical scrubs, appears. When she spots Summer, her eyes widen and quickly turn to terror just like Bennett’s.
“Get her chair,” Bennett orders, and Charlie takes off without so much as a nod.
Tentatively, I move down the hallway toward them, inserting myself fully into a situation I know I have no business in. I don’t say anything, though, because for as gentle as Bennett is being on the outside, I can tell he’s a loaded powder keg on the inside.
Charlie returns with a small wheelchair in no time, and Bennett stands at Summer’s side as she lowers herself into the seat and places her feet on the footrests. He doesn’t, I note with some curiosity, touch her at all.
Crouching in front of her instead, he lowers his voice, “You can’t scare me like that, Summblebee.”
Summblebee. His gentle voice and the tenderness in his eyes urge a ball of emotion to fill my throat. Tears sit just behind my eyes, but I claw against them with absolutely everything I have.
“I know it’s hard, so hard, being confined to your chair, but the doctors said the bones are too weak to handle your own weight now,” he tells her with the kind of tenderness I didn’t even know Bennett Bishop was capable of. “I don’t want you to get hurt—I don’t want you to hurt any more than you already are.”
“I know, Daddy. But Charlie was in the bathroom, and I heard someone’s voice out here, and I wanted to see who it was.” Her eyes move to me. “Norah, are you a friend of my dad’s?”
Bennett’s head turns to me, and I try not to shrivel under the glare. It’s concern for his daughter, not ire with me—at least, I think.
Am I a friend of her dad’s? I might laugh at that question if this entire situation didn’t feel so heavy.
“Actually, I think I’m going to be your dad’s new assistant.” The words just fall out of my mouth before I think them through.
“You painted the sunset?” she asks excitedly, the corners of her mouth shooting up again.